January 2018

By Doug Stephens On October 25 of this year — on an otherwise quiet day in retail news — Nike chief executive Mark Parker fired a reverberating shot across the bow of the entire retail industry. He announced that out of Nike’s global universe of more than 30,000 retail partners the brand would, going forward, …

By Doug Stephens In 2011, in what has now become retail folklore, Ron Johnson, one of the brains behind the Apple Store, was hired to resuscitate the American department store chain JCPenney. At the time, I was asked to write an article for Advertising Age on whether Johnson would succeed or fail at this herculean …